What My Mind Forgot, What My Heart Remembered
by DZHoneyBee
Summary: Don't let the fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swaps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved. H/R Eventual Slash.
1. Chapter 1

**So this is something new I'm trying. I've never written in first-person before, especially from Aaron's point of view, so I apologize for any character inconsistencies. I wanted this piece to be very personal and dream-like and I hope you all will enjoy it! **

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Take my advice.

Don't let the fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swaps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to grasp hold of. The world you desire can be won. It _exists_.

_It's real._

_It is possible._

_It's yours to take if you want._

But don't let it slip through your fingers.

Because that's what I did.

That's what I'm realizing as I sit here on the bitter pavement, praying to God that someone will pick me up, that someone will guide me into the light or set fire to this nightmare and burn it into oblivion.

That I'll wake up and I'll look into familiar hazel eyes that glint a golden hue when tipped to the sunlight, that I'll touch the place where his lips should be, and that I'll smile because mornings are always playful for us.

_Were_ always playful.

The mind is a fascinating instrument; its ability to pull thousands of strands of memories in a single second draws my lip into a snarl and causes my eyes to water because it should Spence telling me this information. It shouldn't be Spence in the memories.

We all told him it would be one time too many that he walked into a hostage situation with only his words as a replacement to the chilly Glock strapped into its holster at my ankle.

Ironic how twenty-seven words were lost to the wind before Spence took that blow to the head instead of firing a twenty-seven numbered gun.

My vision clouds momentarily and as I pull my hands from my face, lonely tears pool in my blue palms like a frosted broth.

I'm a million miles away and all I think is_ It should have been me._ It shouldn't be me out here, sitting under the stars in the calm and still night, while my calm and still lover lays….in there.

Spencer had been eerily motionless….just _lying_ there…until they lifted him from the ground, careful not to jostle him, and packed him into the ambulance.

Me?

I just stood there. I stood there and wondered if this was what it was like. Letting love slip between your fingers because you hadn't been sure of making it _real_. Making him your husband.

Because I had played the not-quite, the not-yet and the not-at-all cards.

Laid them out like a goddamn royal _flush_.

* * *

It's the _swoosh_ of the hospital sliding doors that flood my ears and the hands caressing my stiff shoulders that make me wonder whether it was all worth it in the end. The job. The high-powered career. The adrenaline of justice pumping through my veins at an awesome volume each and every day. The death of my ex-wife and the moments where my son looks to me with his wide and blue eyes, asking where Mommy is.

The subsequent role of Daddy becoming a distant sort of haze in the back of his mind, I'm sure.

"Aaron, the doctor is asking to speak with you." It's a voice I recognize but it is just noise. White sound that blurs my vision and my feet lift from the ice on the ground and suddenly I'm inside.

I'm inside the waiting room and I see my team slumped in chairs and I want to laugh because it's like a mirror.

It's like Emily again.

* * *

Doctor Driscoll is mechanical yet I find myself softening as his words take affect and I've heard it all before. The patient _should_ make a full recovery; the patient has been put under the influence of painkillers and the patient should wake up shortly.

He's polished and precise and my brow creases as I wonder whether I'm like that. Whether I'm that..._methodical. _

"I'd like to see him now." No wavers or trembles in my voice and my armor clicks into place, piece by piece until I'm drawn to my full height, behind the weight of the words FBI emblazoned on my Kevlar.

The room is to my left and it's Dave to nods to me, who gives me dark and understanding eyes, who knows my relationship with Spence, to who tells me to go ahead without them.

The team will understand.

And _God_, he's small when I reach him.

Fragile beneath the stark snow-white sheets of his bed.

My breath catches in my throat and suddenly it's difficult to breath and tears spring to my eyes and I'm latching onto the doorframe and my right ear is ringing with all the intent on bringing me to my knees so that I may know the pain and suffering that my lover has endured.

It's magnetic and I crave the raw feeling that comes when I dig my nails into my already frozen palms. It's a punishment and my eyes blaze with a chilly wetness as my gaze lowers to Spencer.

So small. So fragile.

_Alone_.

He's untouchable, like a distant diamond sky, and I find myself with my arms outstretched regardless.

His hair is amber and his lips are tinged a tongue pink and he's all that I remember from the other night when I carefully laid him out beneath my panting body, the moans fresh in my ears.

"I'm here, honey," I murmur, smoothing my fingers over his forehead again and again and gently rubbing small circles over his knuckles in a futile attempt to wake him from his slumber.

Fawn eyelashes flutter and I draw back my hands because I'm afraid if I squeeze too hard I'll break him.

"Spence, I'm here. It's okay, you're safe." The words are a mess and I'm a mess because this feeling is all too new and I don't have the bureau's fraternization policies to cower behind. We're exposed and my heart is uncritically open to him like a navy ocean to a midnight sky.

I keep my tone soft, the concern creeping through and my armor dissolves as Spencer's eyes open.

They glow under unforgiving lights and they no longer hold the haunted hollowness that was present, as he had walked into the house earlier.

A small tongue laps at chapped lips and I feel almost broken with the urge to press my own lips to his but we can't and _I_ can't.

"Spence?" I whisper, hoarse.

_Look at me. _

My lover looks at me finally and it's not the weight of emotion and reassurance that I expect to see flood his features. It's not exhaustion or even relief that I'm here. It's not a wealth of love or a twinkling of remembrance and it's not the pouring of tears and the squeak of insecurity and it's not the small smirk of irony at the realization that we're back to where we began with the Anthrax.

It's a barren look.

It's empty and most of all it's uncertain.

It's a mystified expression that doesn't have a place on SSA Dr. Spencer Reid's face.

"Who are you?"

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**To be continued if you would like.**

**_Please_ review and let me know what you think about Hotch's point of view! **


	2. Chapter 2

The voices are caught like underwater caves and they swell in volume, sloshing at my ears, _begging_ for release.

_There appears to be slight swelling…_

_Perhaps some memory loss…_

_Should make a full recovery within the year…_

_I'm sorry._

The words detonate like a bomb. Spill like poison, seeping into every vulnerable crevice and crack that I've let remain exposed. That my armor hasn't been able to deflect.

The words spread like wildfire and the prickly path of gasoline ignites the roaring in my ears and my hands are on the doorframe again and I'm gasping for something, _anything_.

It's the full impact that licks at my flesh and Morgan's hands are on me as I just _sit_ on the ground and goddamn stare at it.

We had gotten it right this last time, Spence and I.

It had been so _right_. And I hadn't prepared for my carefully built shelter to come crumbling down with a blow to the head.

The image of us, Jack and Spence, _us_ as a _family_ is so very small in the back of my mind and it's becoming hard to tolerate the lights in the hospital. It's as though the memory was as fragile as a dream and that nothing was every really what it appeared to be.

"Spence, it's me." I choke out, reaching forward.

The man retracts his hand from my stretch as though I've burned him and it's like acid to the senses, watching him recoil and feeling him tense under my slight brush of contact.

It's years of patience and coaxing and small dinners and gentle kisses and shy smiles and slow loving and unexplained losses and deaths and finally bigger kisses and passionate proclamations and it's gone.

It's all gone like sand in the wind and I bring my outstretched hand to curl in on itself and I draw blood to the surface of my palm because I need to know that I'm alive.

That I'm not surfing worlds apart from the man I love and that he really is lying in front of me, brows strung together in hesitation and fear.

He's only said three small words to me and it's a blast to my throat, which goes dry as I try desperately to reply.

"I'm Aaron Hotchner, Spence."

Blank stare.

"We work together…. we…"

Unfinished sentences because we _can't_. Talk. About. _Us_.

"What year is it Spence?"

His voice is meek as he states "2003."

_2003_. Almost a decade is gone from his beautifully complex mind.

My voice cracks as I choke out, "Do you remember where you were earlier today?"

"I was in class…I wa-….I go…to the…to them, um, Federal Bureau of Investigation Academy in Quantico, Virginia…."

I'm a ghost in his mind. I don't exist and I'm so, so far away from his dreams.

Tears cloud my eyes and I can't bring myself to look at the rest of my team, my _family_, because I know one look at Penelope or Morgan's face would just break me completely.

We've come so far and not far at all in so many years; shattering, splintering, just damn breaking and putting ourselves back together – with the departure of Gideon and Elle, Spence's addiction, Haley's and Emily's death…

The man….not the agent…in me is dying to just cry out in agony. But the agent in me knows to keep the stoic mask on because they look to me for guidance and right now Spence is looking at me for answers. Answers that I just can't give him.

At least not now.

We've had cases like these – the victims suffering from amnesia of sorts – but to look into the eyes of someone who has shared so many memories with you and have them stare blankly back, no remembrance of the sweet kisses before bedtimes, the laughs over microwavable hot chocolate, and the embraces after missed gunshots…it's a searing pain that tears at the bindings of my emotions.

"Spence…." JJ breaths behind me but the words are killed on her lips because there are no words, no apologies to be made and no hope that he'll remember her.

"You lectured in my Profiling 202 class…." Spence's voice wavers in the thick, humid room.

The inside of my shirt floods with sticky sweat and my heart drops as I whip to where he's staring, squinting really, and I realize with a sickening relief that he's staring at Dave.

It's someone he knows.

He's not alone.

"That I did, son," Dave swallows calmly and he steps around my crouched form to grasp and pat my boyfriend's hand loosely. "I remember you. You sat in the front row."

Spence nods uneasily. He's caught in the labyrinth between the timid and uncertain man I knew years ago and the confident and smirking genius I know him to be.

How I knew him only this morning.

I watch him, frowning. I want so badly to wrap him in my arms but I know it will spook him and he'll retreat back into himself. He won't believe me.

I need to earn his trust.

After a decade of friendship and two years of love…I need to _rebuild_ our trust.

And I just want to scream _it's me!_

My skin itches and I shoot up from my fallen position and storm out of the room. It's waves and waves and waves of anger coursing through my body suddenly and my fingers tingle with the familiar darkness to just slip into an emotional escape. I want to slam my head into the wall over and over again until I can't feel the pain anymore.

I'm telling myself that I _know_ him. I want to tell myself that he'll blink all of a sudden, smile and bite his bottom lip and proclaim that this is his best magic trick yet. Morgan will slap his thigh and ruffle Spence's hair and bark out "Hah, ya got us, Pretty Boy!" while JJ will wipe her tears in a shuddering relief and wrap her delicate arms around the man she's looked out for all these years. Penelope's eyes will widen and she'll laugh and make a joke about her junior G-Man. Emily will snort and roll her eyes in that good-natured way of hers and Dave will smirk and mutter "kids these days."

And me?

I'll meet Spence's gaze and we'll know it's just us in the room. We'll meet and it will be one of our silent and serene exchanges, so carefully constructed, and we'll smile. We'll smile and it's in the way he looks at me that I will feel the shudder of life jolt through my body.

It's his smile that makes me feel alive.

Because this confusion, this haze, is nothing more than a doorway for us to pass through. It's another speed bump in the road and we'll get through this because we have to.

Because we have to…

I open my eyes.

Morgan isn't ruffling Spence's hair but instead his shoulders slope with defeat and I know he's fighting back tears.

JJ and Emily's hands are tightened around each other's in white-knuckled fits of strength and sadness behind one of the plastic chairs at the foot of the bed.

Penelope's body trembles with the agony of suppressed desperation.

Dave's lips are pressed together as he gazes at Spence. Hurt in his eyes and hurt in his heart.

And me?

I stand and I think that our love was such a delicate thing that it required a tissue-paper touch and the warmest, safest place to grow, yet there it was out in the real world where we let it batter around by storms of ill will and bad circumstances and demons of our own.

I stand and think that our love didn't really stand a chance.

* * *

Spence's hospital room is cloaked in soft dove gray light a few hours later, the stars high in the sky illuminating his sleeping form. The morning feels as though it never really happened at all and exhaustion threatens to overpower me but every time I close my eyes, it's Spence's blank expression in my mind. It's his lips moving ever so slowly, murmuring _Who are you?_ and my body breaks out in a new series of sweats.

"Hotch?"

"What are you still doing here Morgan? It's late."

Morgan's hand clap down on my shoulders and I want to flinch, to do something because I haven't moved in hours, but I just feel a sigh escape from between my lips.

"Actually it's early. It's four a.m. I sent everyone else home."

The man settles in the chair next to me but we don't look at each other. I'm not ready to share Spence with him yet and moving my head will make it all real. It will expose my brokenness … that I have been spending the last few hours negotiating with God to make _my_ Spence come back.

After what seems like an hour, Morgan finally speaks.

"Doctor Driscoll told me he should stay with someone. Hopefully it will replenish the forgotten memories if he's in familiar settings."

"He'll stay with Jack and I-"

"Hotch-"

"Morgan."

He's silent and Spence stirs in his sleep. Both of us inhale and then settle. He's not awake and he's not remembering yet. "He's staying with Jack and I because…" I can't finish my sentence and my voice breaks.

"Because you love him and he loves you."

Morgan knowing about us should have me on my guard. Should cause my defenses to rise up and the contradiction on the tip of my tongue but I can't gather the energy to do so.

My palms are slick with sweat and smell like Spence when my face finally sinks into them and I rest my elbows on my knees. It's like I'm useless. I can't be the hero….I can't save anyone because someone's already gone.

The only someone who needed to stay alive.

"Aaron? Look at me." Morgan nudges my thigh and I glance up, face dark, heart clenched.

"You're a good man, Aaron. One of the best and I'm sorry if I haven't told you that before." He rubs his chin. "You took care of Reid when no one else could and I finally realized something was…._up_, when I noticed the smiles you both shared at work. He loves you, man….he really, _really_ loves you, Aaron."

"Loved."

"Something can change, Aaron. The doctor said that this could be temporary. Of course I don't have any statistics like Reid would-" Morgan breaks off and we share a look.

Reid shouldn't be the silent one in bed. He should be amicably walking about the room, hands wild and in the air, his face lit up with the excitement that only he can gain from discussing probabilities.

"I know that we can all move past this. I, uh, called Strauss. She gave us two weeks off."

Another squeeze to the shoulder because it's too fearful to break from our roles as Agent Hotchner and Agent Morgan.

"Thank you, Morgan."

He's gone after a moment and I turn back to Spence because I'm afraid that if I even dare to look elsewhere he'll be gone too. He'll slip from my grasp and he'll remember less and less about himself, about us, about me, about our family.

"Hey, Spence." I whisper, brushing a finger over the back of his hand. His skin is soft and inviting with only a dull bruise to mar the creaminess. "I'm Aaron. Aaron Hotchner."

It feels stupid to talk to someone who's asleep, who doesn't care who I am, but I swallow and continue. "I work with you at the FBI. That's what you're studying to join now." Tears collect in the corners of my eyes. "Hey, guess what, honey? You already made it. You're at the BAU…"

It's been a few hours and my stories are whispered to him throughout the breaking of the peach-colored dawn. He's still asleep but I tell him about his 24th birthday and the hideous birthday hat that Penelope made him wear. I tell him about where he got that bullet scar on his knee and about how proud I am that he's accomplished so much. I tell him about Emily and JJ and Dave and Morgan and about his nicknames and how he likes to arrange his books at his desk and how we occasionally sneak the quick kiss in the hallway. I tell him how it all began….after the Anthrax…how it all started with a night just like this one, while a storm raged outside and I sat with him while he slept.

I tell him how he taught Jack to play chess when he was only seven and how much Jack loves his Uncle Spence.

I tell him everything and anything and nothing all at once.

Because it still comes down to when he wakes up and when he's going to remember who he is and who he will become.

I take one last shuddering breath before I let the exhaustion take over and I allow one last smile because he's coming home with me tomorrow.

In this life, you must provide your own light to the darkness and we've beaten the odds. We've risen from the ashes and we'll recover.

Spence and I have been a beautiful fight.

Still will be.

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**Thank you to everyone who has read/reviewed/favorited/alerted this story so far! It means a lot! Please review! **


	3. Chapter 3

**Sorry it took so long for me to update this story! I got carried away by The Lightening Strike! This chapter is slightly spiritual/contemplating life so I apologize if that's not your plate of Oreos.**

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Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, _who am I to be brilliant, handsome, talented, exceptional?_

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking for the reason that others will not feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. In my profession it is imperative to remind myself that when our greatest fears are presented to ourselves, we are the ones to put away the evils of humanity.

Who am I but a witness to the madness of life that we all so often fall for? The glory of illumination is within us. It is not just in some of us.

It is in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to follow in our footsteps, to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Spence has been home for a month with little to no progression in his memory and yet I find myself in the throes of contemplation at the hours of dawn. Too many times have I come to the conclusion that this is my chance. This is my chance to do it all over again with him.

Mercifully Strauss and the iron fists of the higher federal powers have given my subordinate and I a month's leave from the Bureau in the hope that a few weeks will warp my almost lover back into the genius agent he was before he left us. Of course every now and again Spencer will get this glint his eyes like we're sharing a private joke over the dinner table and all of a sudden we're us again and it's alright and we're alright but once more it is gone before I can entirely register it. Then there's Jack, who remains a stranger to the man.

It is nothing more than a dull stab to my old heart when my son looks to me with the beginnings of tears when Spence doesn't remember how he would always read with Jack at bedtime. And regardless of forgetting, Spencer will still sit down with him when asked and recite divine stories with all the excitement in the world as though he really did remember their prized bond.

That's just the way he is. Spence will always put others ahead of himself and I admire him arduously for it.

Me? I watch. I am a quiet voyeur to this new situation. I am patiently waiting for the catastrophe of my being to seem beautiful again and loveable. I am longing in high spirits and bitterness for the day when we wake up and he knows again. When he knows everything. It may be the coldest day of the year and the snows and skies of memories may be diminished or even dead and yet when he knows...when he knows who he is and was...I will be myself again. Into the darkness of familiarity the hope is but a small comfort against the vast light of the unknown.

Spencer is the sun that I orbit around and his detached self knows no bounds and I sometimes find myself on the outer rings of Saturn it seems, desperately clinging to his radiant gravity because I might spin so far away that I lose light of this insane situation that I am so in love with.

Thirty days and I have come to welcome our friendship as a break to the years we would fight and love each other in intervals. It is a clean slate. Painful, but the brief days of support from the team has eased most.

Dave has been marvelous with Spence, as is JJ on occasion. Morgan is angry and frustrated as he has every right to be, as my new housemate still remains wary of his brotherly teasing and zeal. Emily and Garcia are small slivers of grief that take it to the heart when Spence does not return their embraces and declines offers to spend time "with the girls" like he so often did in the past. There are moments of fastidious dismay when we try to ignore our situation and forget that we have a new presence in our team. It is like welcoming someone new to our family in the darkest of hours and we want not to replace Spencer but commemorate him when he is not even gone.

There are some things broken and some things lost but there are other things that may be restored and replenished. Our bridge as a team has crumbled under the weight of such an upset. But then there's the silver lining: the chance for something special to be built.

All of us together.

There are of course the doctors that hover around him and more and more I find myself at a loss for words and don't want to hear other people talking about it either. Their conversations and condolences seem false and empty and I prefer the company of solitude, which says nothing and never makes me really feel alone, or with this familiar and new man in my life. He is a hybrid of sorts, a mold of timidity from the past and confident sarcasm of the present that I am growing accustomed to. This intense sort of reminder makes the days when he is a total stranger a little easier to bare.

So here we are tonight and I'm up late sitting at the kitchen table, polishing off the last of the annual reports I still am required to complete despite my sabbatical.

The blonde moon is a glorious slice in the apricot sky when night finally deigns to crawl over the horizon. Mustard scraps buff gas puffs into oblivion and all of Virginia is serene and a bore. Is it only when I rub my eyes in tiredness that I notice the shy shadow bouncing in the entranceway to the kitchen.

"Hey," I breathe, taking in the sight of Spence, my almost husband and my never forever.

"Hi Aaron," and my name on his lips is music and the small twinge in my chest is sadness. He has developed the pattern of saying my name frequently in spoken speech as a method in which to drive his mind to remember.

Alas, nothing.

I have not breached our cool friendship in hopes that a wild night of lust will frighten him into remembering just what we are and I just tell myself that we need time. Patience and time. And with my quiet ignorance, he has come to ask questions regarding the nature of our friendship and it has brought a croak in my voice on numerous occasions to deny it all. He doesn't believe me, I know it. The narrowed gazes and the furrowed brow during family time broadcast more than enough. He knows that beneath the tentative smiles and skating on eggshells lies something incredibly and passionately secret.

It is frustrating to not come completely clean so I am only somewhat alarmed when a pale and creamy hand covers mine tonight.

I glance up, an archaic pair of brown colliding with inquisitive amber and my heart is at once a dampened fire.

Those looks he would give me all those years ago...they never aged. And here it is again: the same look with an owner who is unaware.

Few moments pass in uncomfortable silence and we both eye our overlapped hands for what seems like an eternity.

"You lied but you never hid anything," he says in the barest of whispers and I strain to catch his words. "You kept pictures around...of us... and I don't remember any of them." He pauses and the steady hum of my body is the only noise to be heard, I am sure. "I keep telling myself to remember..._please_, _Spencer, remember_. But being in this house...the smells, the furniture, the feelings...I just know."

"Know what?" My voice is but a passing glimpse of sound because I need to know what he is thinking.

And then in an instant, his hand tightens around mine and his eyes take on the cloud of nostalgia, a terrific change and all at once his thoughts are in his face.

The smallest breath hangs in the air and then he leans in, over all the mess of paper and over all the mess of ourselves until our lips are a few inches away.

"We were in love, weren't we, Aaron?"

This will perhaps be my greatest battle. This I will remember in my older years when I sit and look out at those who pass me by. I'll sit and watch and dream about Spencer's words and how his eyes looked in that moment.

You know, we pretend to know what we're doing. We pretend to know when and where we're going and what life will hold for us and what we would do if we could go it all over again.

But in all honesty, we have no idea.

All we hope is that somehow, someday, we end up where we're meant to be.

Someday, we'll get there.

Someday, we'll get it all right.

"Yes," I finally say in tears, "and it was a beautiful love."

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**Please review!**


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